The Easy Way to Add $9000 to Your Savings This Year

This article discusses how you can add over $9000 dollars to your savings account by making a few simple changes and side hustling. This article contains affiliate links, for more information please see my disclosure policy.

We could all use more money in our savings. Maybe you have a goal to take a dream vacation or save for a down payment on a house. There are plenty of ways to add some extra money to your savings with simple switches.

For simplicity sake, we will consider two ways to get money into savings: earning extra income to put directly in savings, or spending less than what you currently do and the leftover money will be put into savings.

Save on Groceries

You can save big on groceries just by switching grocery stores. During my head-to-head comparison, I showed you could save 36%-42% just by shopping at Aldi instead of your local grocer. If your monthly grocery budget is $500/month, you can save ~$200/month or $2400 a year.

That’s awesome savings, but that’s not enough for you. You start meal planning and using Ibotta and Checkout 51 to get extra cash back on “any brand” items at Aldi. These two moves can add up to at least $50 per month.

Yearly Addition to Savings Account: $3000

Savings Account total: $3000

Related: Use my Ibotta link and get $10 after you redeem your first offer

Call Your Cell Phone and Internet/Cable Providers

If you are like me, you don’t like change and are skeptical when people tell you to switch cell phone or cable/internet providers to save money. Well the good news is that you can still save money and stay with your provider.

Most of the time if you simply call your provider and tell them you are thinking about leaving because their rates are too high or that you saw a promotion with a better deal than what you currently have, they are able to add a discount to your account. I was able to save $20/month on my cell phone plan and $20/month on my internet plan just by calling my providers.

If that discount isn’t enough you can also that a critical look at your plans and see if you are truly using all of it. Lowering your cell phone data plan or cancelling your sports package on cable can easily save you $10+/month

If you are willing to switch providers, you could save even more with inexpensive pay as you go cell phone plans or dropping cable all together.

Yearly Addition to Savings Account: $600

Savings Account total: $3600

Complete Surveys and Online Activities

Taking online surveys is an easy way to earn some extra cash online. I like to do surveys while I am watching TV and relaxing at night.

One of my favorite sites to use for taking surveys is Swagbucks. They always have multiple surveys available to take and add new surveys frequently. The average reward for a survey is about 50-100 Swagbucks (1 Swagbuck = 1 cent) and takes about 10 minutes. In addition, you can earn Swagbucks by watching videos, checking out news articles, searching the web, and playing games.

For simplicity sake we will say you complete 2-3 surveys a day for a $2.00/day earning that you put into your savings account.

Yearly Addition to Savings Account: $730

Savings Account total: $4330

House/Pet/Baby Sit

People are always looking for help looking after their house, pets, and especially kids. Maybe you have a free weekend a month that you just lay around on the couch all day. Instead, you could get your side hustle on and make some extra cash for your savings account by taking care of houses, pets, and kids.

From my experience, I have made about $10/day watching people’s houses while they are on vacation, $35/day watching a dog that was brought to my house while its owners were out of town, and $10/hour watching a baby while her parents went out to dinner.

While the idea of babysitting might seem like a high school job, it still is a very legitimate way for adults to make a little extra income. You could advertise your pet or babysitting services on websites such as care.com

Let’s say once a month you land a job to look after a house for a week, dog for the weekend, or baby for a few hours and earn $70 to put into savings.

Yearly Addition to Savings Account: $840

Savings Account total: $5170

Pack Your Lunch and Bring Your Coffee

Do you find yourself grabbing coffee on your way to work or heading out at lunch time for your meal. An average meal when you go out is about $10 and your morning coffee is probably around $3. Multiply that $13/day by 20 work days per month and you are spending $260/month just grabbing food

Now, being the savvy saver you are, you can start using your meal prep skills to make sure you have leftovers to take for lunch. Also buy a super cute travel mug to bring your own coffee in and skip the trip to Starbucks.

You could cut your lunch and coffee spending from $260 down to $50. The $50 covers those emergency coffee runs and some extra groceries you might need for your lunches.

Sell Your Stuff

You probably have a lot of extra “stuff” laying around that you don’t even use any more. Why not sell it to make some extra money for your savings account!

Some of the “stuff” you might sell:

clothes

books

small appliances

old cell phones and electronics

furniture

kids toys

You can sell your stuff in many different ways including at a garage sale, craigslist, ebay, consignment shops, apps like Letgo, and local Facebook groups. You will be surprised by how much you can get for some of your stuff.

I think it is pretty reasonable to say you can make $300/year selling your unused stuff depending on what you are looking to sell.

Yearly Addition to Savings Account: $300

Savings Account total: $7990

Invest with Acorns

To help build your savings even more, you should set up an Acorns account. Acorns is an app that let you start an investment account with less than $1.

Acorns has a feature called Round Ups were it tracks every transaction you make and rounds up the cents to the nearest dollar. It keeps track of all these “Round Ups” and when they add up to at least $5, it transfers the money from your checking account to your Acorns investment account. Think of it as a high tech version of your grandpa’s coin jar.

When my fiance and I were going through our “big spenders” phase, we had enough transactions to account for about $120/month of Round Ups. Since we have cut back on our spending, we have fewer transactions so our Round Ups come to about $50/month.

Since you are using your Acorns account to invest, you are earning more interest than if you save your money in a plain old savings account. During your year of savings, Acorns earns you a 5% annual return (your real rate will vary but 5% pretty conservative). With $8590 in your Acorns account that is $430!!

Note: I know that interest isn’t calculated as easy as multiplying your year end total by 5% assuming monthly deposits, but for argument’s sake, we’ll say it’s close 🙂

Yearly Addition to Savings Account: $430

Savings Account total: $9020

With your interest included, you can easily save over $9000 a year!! All it takes is a couple simple spending switches and a few easy side hustles.

4 thoughts on “The Easy Way to Add $9000 to Your Savings This Year”

Thanks for sharing these great tips! I pack my lunch to work every day and feel great about not having to wait in line for it. Also, it saves me a nice chunk of money every month not having to buy a $7-10 every day. The food can be repetitive, but it tastes great when I’m hungry. 🙂